Allan Wilson, Michael Petersen, Ehrensvaerd Jakob and Grip Stina, amongst others, have described devices for monitoring, recording and downloading medication dispensing histories for blister packaged medication; see for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,113,101, 7,178,417, 6,628,199, 6,244,462, 7,170,409, 6,616,035, 7,616,116 and 7,772,974 along with PCT application having publication number WO/2009/135283. Also see Canadian application No. 2353350 and U.S. Publication Nos. 20070278285, 20080191174 and 20080053222.
Such devices broadly comprise sensor detecting/monitoring electronic tags, sensor grids printed with conductive ink, means of connecting the two and means of inserting the device in a pharmaceutical blister package.
Despite having been marketed and tested for ten years, the success of any current technology for medication monitoring of blister packages has been severely limited. A need has been identified for further refinements of such devices to address problems with the current technologies. These include:    difficulty connecting the flexible substrate grid physically and electrically to the rigid tag    instability of conductive inks printed on paperboard substrates yielding unreliable electrical characteristics    tendency of printed conductive inks to crack under repeated deformation (bending)    cost of conductive inks    difficulty tearing or breaking the substrate with normal tablet expulsion    cost of the sensor monitoring tag
The pharmaceutical market wants a medication monitoring device that is:    cheap    100 percent reliable    fits seamlessly into the packaging process    is easy for the consumer to use    has a reusable electronic module    allows for the use of breakable substrates to facilitate consumer use    allows for the use of thin substrates to minimize package bulk    can accommodate optional functionality including reminders, data input buttons, and LED and LCD displays, etc.    can accommodate optional printed devices including humidity and temperature sensors, printed wireless communication including capacitive coupled, RFID, HF, UHF, Bluetooth and NFC, and OLED displays, printed batteries etc